Acquaintance with the mass of opinion reports surviving...

Acquaintance with the mass of opinion reports surviving from the Nazi state, complex and difficult though these sources are, allows little scope for sweeping generalisations about attitudes and behaviour of the German people during the Third Reich. There is too much evidence of daily dissent and even manifestations of limited, opposition and protest – limited in significance, certainly, but noteworthy just the same - to support notions of a society terrorised by a totalitarian state into meek submission and automaton-like obedience and compliance. The opposite generalisation, of a consensus holding to the end, of a society which never seriously deviated from its backing for Hitler and the regime, seems equally flawed. A survey of the†¦show more content†¦This ‘underlying consensus’ existed at the intersection of the social expectations of national ‘salvation’ which accompanied Hitler’s rise to power, and the constantly propagated utopi an vistas of the regime’s long-term goals of a dominant, prosperous and united Germany. The representative figure of this future vision was Hitler, and the expectations placed in ‘heroic’ leadership, and constantly pumped-up by a propaganda machine in overdrive when it came to the manufacture of the Fà ¼hrer cult, meant the personalisation of this consensus in the Leader’s ‘great achievements’. Beneath this veneer of consensus, however, the everyday realities of the Third Reich revealed a society which belied the propaganda image of a united ‘national community’. The ways in which Nazism impinged upon everyday life were divisive rather than unifying. Areas of consent might be discerned; a general consensus cannot. Propaganda slogans about putting the community before the individual, and sacrifice today for prosperity and happiness tomorrow had a hollow ring for the millions low down the social ladder who saw their own working con ditions deteriorate while the rampant corruption and arrogance of power above them were all too evident. The disappointments and disillusionment of daily life could, however, find compensation – though not on a lasting basis – by the affective